


Kol Khara

by Neverlong



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Slight spoilers, but it's important Arabic, for this fic, not very related, title is surprisingly light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:11:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13351473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverlong/pseuds/Neverlong
Summary: Kouen isn't a man of many words. As such, he can't bring himself to say the three that he means the most.





	Kol Khara

"Hey, Kouen, you remember the time I dared you to climb that huge cypress tree?" You set the tea service on the floor, swiping your hand over the cup nearest to you and picking it up before it was cool.

Kouen eyes you bemusedly, knowing your reaction before you have the chance to yelp. He takes the cup from you with calloused hands. Yours are soft; they're delicate against his.

They always were.

"Thanks," you mutter sheepishly, offering a smile up as payment. Your face returns to its previously wistful state, an abstract look taking over your eyes. "So d'you remember?"

"You were the one to climb it in the end," he snorts. You glance over, but his face is at ease. As pure and crisp as a water lily—though maybe one that had been trampled in a past maelstrom, once you acknowledged the wrinkles beside his eyes and his sunken cheeks.

Kouen Ren had seen better days. You had witnessed many of them at his side, or from a distance.

"I suppose I was," you relent, though not without lacing your fingers around the crook of his elbow. "There was a cicada on it. I nearly fell when I saw it."

"I remember." And he grinned, because he remembered it well. Your screaming, the sounds of branches cracking, his haste to make your fall safe. But you didn't come down quickly. You righted yourself, with a laugh; he was left to gawk at you and your expansive mood swings and every thoughtless action of yours since. It was his delight to share them with you.

And now this. Exiled, publicly executed, betrayed by his own family—and not for the first time at all. Sentenced to a life on a previously uninhabited island. His legs are gone, and an arm, as well as his pride and any titles he had previously held.

But he has Koumei and Kouha—and you.

"I never could tell what you were thinking, Kouen." The words are enough to shatter his sentimental reverie. "You should have said more. You could have fixed things if you'd just tried to reach out to Hakuryuu."

"Hm."

You laugh and wave your hands at him in a 'You see? This is what I mean!' gesture. It takes a moment for equilibrium to return to the courtyard, and when it does, he wonders if you're waiting for him to speak. If this is another game of yours—a not-so-unusual matter.

"Koumei wasn't easy to read, either, but at least he would talk. He would read me such wonderful poetry when I sewed—his voice would crack after every line, you know, but I didn't mind so much." Your voice dips into a whisper beneath the sea breeze, as gentle as the ebbing tide. It's soothing in a way that nearly makes him sigh.

It seems he does that quite often these days.

"I still worry about you endlessly," you hum, a caressing laugh dripping from your lips. "But I guess I'm used to that by now. You always were so difficult to keep up with."

"I believe you're mistaken," he grumbles. You're left with no choice but to defend yourself: "Well, maybe I was a handful too. But you...well, do you remember when you tried to learn Arabic?"

A noncommittal grunt is all that you receive, but it's enough of an answer to satisfy you.

"The first thing I remember you trying to say was something like, 'May I speak?' Do you remember what you actually said?"

This too, he remembers, albeit sheepishly. Yes, he remembers it well enough to reimagine the laughter that pored from your father, the royal language tutor and most scholarly man he had ever met—surpassing even Koumei with his passion for schemes and strategy plays. The echoes of laughter in his memories can't compare to the real thing, he knows. Nothing could ever have the heft to fill enough space as that roaring laugh; it was so unlike yours in tone, but just as similar in spirit. Whereas his was the noise and clatter of people collaborating in enormous whispers in a library, yours is the sound of rain on parched earth; a breath of fresh air through the smoke of a flame. Like a lilting voice, ceaselessly taunting him, and he—the fool that he is—falling for it each and every time.

"Yes, I remember." It is a reluctant admission.

He can already tell what your next words will be before you say it. Your face never seems so serious unless you're taking on his character—a task he's seen from you far too many times for it to be respectful or honorable. But, he supposes, that's to be expected from a girl who never cared for proper decorum.

"'Speak and eat shit!' My father couldn't stop bringing it up even months later—oh, don't give me that look! I thought it was charming."

"You always were such a contrarian."

"I like to think of it as _open-minded_."

He releases a snort, all the bark with no bite. If he could commission someone to paint her face, at any point in the time he had known her, he would choose the one she showed him now. A look so raw and in love that it could have stopped the heart of any man.

As it is, Kouen finds his stuttering foolishly. The hope of something that once was, turned into a life forever changed. She loved him, completely, without prejudice.

"Would you have married me, Kouen?" He releases a grunt, merely to signal that he had heard her. Her expression turns disappointed, and somehow the ache Kouen feels at that is worse than the feeling of his heart stopping.

Still, they had always operated on the basis that a relationship between them would be only slightly possible when he was but the first son of the emperor's brother. Added responsibilities had only polarized their social standings.

Marriage. What a silly thing to be asking about. How fitting for her to ask it.

"If we were both peasants, would that have made anything different?" He realizes all too soon what she's aching to get at, what he should have known she wanted all along: validation. That she wasn't the only one who felt led along by his very presence in the room. That she wasn't the only one who felt whatever it was that had drawn them together, ceaselessly, even after Gyokuen had attempted to wrench them apart with the blades of blunt knives in glares and poisoned whispers.

The doorway gapes open to Koumei interrupting their conversation, and their moment together feels lost or broken somehow. Kouen's hands feel cold, devoid of any cups of tea or soft hands. The tea service is gone.

Koumei quietly asks who has stopped for a visit. After all, their little island doesn't receive many envoys, and he can't remember the last time a ship had brought a new person along.

It's silent for a patient gulp of time. The leaves of the midnight plants are swaying to the misty wind, and the moon flowers are blooming with their waxy petals that reflect the beams of their namesake. They are reminiscent of what was once a little girl, the one who had showed them to him so long ago.

_"Prince Kouen, look at those!"_

_"Aren't they beautiful? My mother grows some in her garden back home."_

_"Huh? Well...I guess when I get married and go away, I'll have to take some with me! That way I'll never forget how pretty they look now!"_

"Just an old friend." His brother glances around the growingly curious room, hoping to see the secret Kouen is keeping from him.

"You're ever worrisome, brother." Koumei neglects to take the place at his older brother's side, probably because it's late enough for him to rightfully worry.

Still, the words are a cold shock to Kouen's system. Although not as gently phrased as yours, Koumei's concern is ever present.

_You worry me, Kouen._

"Just try to get some sleep tonight."

"Don't worry about me." There's no point, he knows. Sleep never awaits him in his empty bed; his dreams always end up entangled and burdening his waking body with gasping breaths and cold sweats. He supposes that he never did listen when you told him to stop running from his problems.

Koumei lets him off for once, leaving him with a sigh that rings far louder than any words Kouen's ever heard his brother speak. It's quiet in the wake of their conversation and Kouen's musing.

_I never could tell what you were thinking._

_You should have said more._

"It was only ever you." But that wasn't right. He'd lived a life longer than many, with more troubles and worries than he could count in a lifetime. He'd had memories without her, and plenty with her, and his regrets did not, by any means, circle entirely around his losing her.

And yet, the words sounded right. Here, where he wasn't a prince or a general or even a titled man—where he was just Kouen—he missed her the most. What could have been. How she would have loved to sit and watch the waves, just happy to be quiet and take in his presence. How she had deserved the chance to escape the palace after the quiet threats of the Empress, the chance to marry and bear children if she chose; the chance to grow old. Thoughts of what never was jostled his mind. They coalesced with dreams that were never meant to come to fruition through fate or happenstance.

Kouen isn't a man of many words. As such, he can't bring himself to say the three that he means the most. Not before, to wide eyes and a gently teasing smile, and not now, when he's the only one left to hear them.

**Author's Note:**

> So here's what I wanted to put in but didn't know how to fit: Reader's family was served the imperial family as far lesser nobility. Her father, specifically, serves as a tutor to the lower tiers of the royalty (so Koutouku's sons) because of his diligence and merit. When Gyokuen overthrows Hakutoku, Reader and Kouen grow close enough for Gyokuen to see her as a threat. She is placed under scrutiny as a traitor of the state and is executed sometime before Kouen's exile.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this angst trip! I've had this half finished for a while, so some of it might seem a little mismatched, and I apologize for that! Oh yes, and 'kol khara' is Arabic for 'eat shit.'


End file.
